A friendly bee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWiWKXaLFv8

Honey bees are assigned jobs based on their age: Bee facts Honey bees are assigned jobs based on their age: The worker bee: 1-2 days old: spend their time cleaning their cells and keeping the brood warm. 3-5 days old: feed older larvae . 6-11 days old: feed the youngest larvae. 12-17 days old: they produce wax, build combs and carry food. 18-21 days old: they provide guard duty, protecting the hive entrance. 22 days until their death at around 40-45 days : they fly from the hive collecting pollen, nectar and water, pollenating plants.

Honey bees don’t always die when stinging something: Bee facts Honey bees don’t always die when stinging something: While honey bees do almost die when stinging humans , they do not so when stinging many other things. The barbs in their stings get caught in our flesh and rip off the stinger and some of the bee’s insides attached to the stinger, spelling certain doom for the bee. However, when stinging insects and certain other types of animals, this is not the case and they cotinine to sting the insect or animal multiple times without harm to themselves.

Bee facts It would only take about one ounce of honey to fuel a bee for a flight around the world: An individual Honey Bee can fly as far as 5 miles form the hive to search for food. A Honey Bee colony will fly a total of around 55, 000 miles to make just one pound of honey. A single hive can produce as much as 60 pounds of honey in a good season, which is about 25 pounds more than they need to survive the winter. It takes about 2, 000, 000 flowers tapped by bees to make just 1 pound of honey.

Bee facts Making honey: Honey Bees make honey by taking nectar from flowers and mixing it with enzymes from glands in their mouths. This is then stored in hexagonal wax honeycombs until the water content has been reduced to around 17%. Once this happened, worker bees cap combs with a wax seal until the bees need it for food, for instance in winter time.

Bee facts The making of a Queen When a colony gets overcrowded, the bees will decide to make a new queen bee: Step 1: Bees construct up to 20 wax cells. Step 2: The current queen lays 20 eggs.. Step 3: Young nurse bees feed young larvae with a special rich creamy food called Royal Jelly and extend the cell downwards until it is about 25mm in length. Step 4: Nine days after laying, the first queen cell is sealed with a layer of wax. Step 5: A large swarm, called the prime swarm , of bees leaves the hive led by the older bees. The old queen gets starved so that she in thinner and able to fly. The older bees then convince the old queen to join the swarm and they go off scouting for a new place to create a colony. Amazingly, the bees will stop off for breaks along the way.

Farming

A world without bees…

Silence of the bees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIUo3STj6tw